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Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for your glory, for your blessings, your goodness, and all things that you have given us. Father, we thank you that we can be here today, gathered the way that we are, Father, to hear from your spirit and your word today, to worship you and to glorify you. I pray as we study today, Father, that you will help us to understand that your word is not outdated and it's still relevant to us today even as our society has changed. Father, I ask that you will conform us to the image of your son that you will be glorified.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to church service here at Church of the Bible. We're going to continue our study tonight through the book of first Corinthians.
We're moving to a new section. So as we move that, let's just review the outline of Corinthians and what's happening. So we began the first chapter. We had his greeting, and then we spent three chapters talking about wisdom and the wisdom of God, the foolishness of man. Then we had issues of impurity.
From chapters five through seven. We talked about sexual immorality, legal issues, all sorts of morality, laxity issues within the church. And then we've spent the last three weeks on gospel freedom and love. We've established that God prefers that we exercise love toward one another more. Then we exercise the freedom and liberty that he gives us within Christianity with grace.
We ended that section last week in chapter eleven. Verse one is really where it ended with chapter ten, where Paul demonstrated through his own ministry and sacrifices what it actually looked like to live out loving your neighbors and loving your fellow men more than exercising your rights and your freedom. So with that said, we're going to, for the next four weeks, we're going to be talking about community worship. What does worship look like in the church? How should we address ourselves within the church?
Gifts of the spirit within the church. We're going to be looking today at subordination and the Lord's supper in chapter 14 before we move on to resurrection. And finally, the conclusion with how God has structured his church. So let's jump in today. Community worship with subordination and the Lord's supper.
We're going to begin in verses one through six or two through six. Actually, he says, now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ. Every man who prays or prophesies with something on his head dishonors his head. Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head with her head on, since that is one in the same as having her head shaved.
For if a woman doesn't cover her head, she should have her hair cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her head be covered. As we begin today's passage, the first 16 verses really, at first glance, seem outdated, right? They do. They, it really seems like, what relevance does this have to Christianity today?
It almost, if you read it in a certain way, almost seems legalistic. But Paul was the champion of freedom. Paul was the champion of grace over law. And this really seems legalistic here. So we have to ask some questions.
What is going on? What is, what is Paul actually addressing here? Is it really as simple as Paul thinks that women need to cover their head and their faces and men do nothing? Or is it, is there something deeper than that that is at stake? So as we look at that, he says in verse two, he begins with praise.
He says, I praise you because you remember what I have told you and hold fast to the traditions. So we need to begin by looking at this first from the positive perspective of Paul. Paul does not address the church in Corinth as if they are actually breaking any rules right now. Instead, he says, I'm praising you because you're holding to these traditions. You're keeping them.
However, it seems more that he's instructing them as to why these traditions existed and why they should continue in them. More like one of those, well, I know this is the rule, so I'm playing by it, but I don't like it. Right. They're keeping it, but they're not happy with it. So he wants them to know why they exist.
So here is. Here is why they exist. He says, christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and God is the head of Christ. This seems to be a weird hierarchy, the way he ordered it. If we want to go from a top down, God is the head of Christ.
Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman. Now, we need to, again, contextualize this, because Paul does not have an idea here that all men are over all women. Rather, he has the idea in the home and in the church. In the home, the husband is the head of the household. In a home, the husband is a spiritual leader.
He should be providing for and guiding and directing and doing everything that the head of household should do in the family and in the church. Men are the head of the church. You don't see in the Bible woman pastors. You don't see women holding leadership, authority over men. In fact, Paul says the opposite.
Says, I prohibit woman to hold authority over men. So he does not have the idea for you men out there that you are over every woman out there. He has the idea that you are the head of your spouse, and for the woman out there, he does not have the idea that you are subordinate to every man. But finally, he also, and he will talk about this later in the chapter, but I'm going to cover it now briefly. He does not have the idea in mind either that just because the husband is ahead of the wife, that the husband is any more important or any more valuable.
The husband and the wife are equal, but that does not change that. There is a hierarchy. If, to put into more simple, like military terms, the general might have a higher rank than the colonel, but he is certainly no more valuable as a human than the colonel. And to demonstrate this, Christ is equal to God. We're told that in Hebrews, we're told that in Colossians, we're told that in John.
We're told that throughout the Bible, Christ is equal to God. Christ is God, right? God in the flesh. He has equality with God. And he, he is in every way just as important as the father.
However, in when God came to earth, he took a subordinate role to God. He submitted himself to the will of the father and became subordinate. But that did not change his equality. So he does not have a mind that all women are under all men. And he does not have a mind that women are unequal to men.
In fact, he will, like I said later, when we get to that, he will talk about that. So he does have a mind, though, that there is a hierarchy, an order that God gave us. And then he says that for a man who prays or prophesies with something on his head, dishonors his head. Men who have their head covered while they pray, especially he has in mind publicly here, they dishonor themselves and they dishonor God. But then it says prophesies, and we need to talk about prophesy here.
The gift of prophecy is a new Testament gift. You see, Paul write about it all the time. But the gift of prophecy is not the office of a prophet, the office of a prophet. Diese with John the Baptist, he was the last. Rather, the gift of prophecy.
We don't see it exercised a lot today. But the gift of prophecy is the fact that God can, can give inspiration right here and now. And people who receive the inspiration of God and then teach publicly in the moment what God has inspired them to say. It's technically a prophecy, but they are receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit and they are conveying it. That's what it means to prophesy here.
Not that you hold the office of prophet, not that you are a prophet and can predict the future. Not that you receive and speak the inspiration of God as you receive it. But then it changes and it flips. While it's dishonorable for a mandehead to cover his head, it is dishonorable for a woman to not cover her head. Right?
And in particular, it's dishonorable for her to pray in public or exercise prophecy in public with her head uncovered. Why? So? First, I want to look at the, the cultural aspect of, or not the cultural, but the, the subordinate aspect. A head covering is symbolic, particularly in the Old Testament and in the greek or roman period, of being subordinate to someone else.
When you have your head covered, it represented that you had someone who is placed above you.
What we'll see, and it's going to come up in a few minutes here, is that even the angels, they cover themselves in the presence of God, and they do so to demonstrate that they are subordinate to God. But they only do so when God is in their presence, or rather, they're in his presence when they can see him. But the same thing here in the physical realm, the woman's covering in this period of time represented the fact that she was subordinate to someone else. So you typically would see unmarried woman did not walk around with a veil over their face. But once you, once a woman was engaged, she wore a veil, but she covered herself.
And then once she was married, she covered herself. And in public, even around her husband, her face was covered and only became uncovered. In private, it represented subordination, likewise. So for a man to cover his head in the time period represented as if he was saying he was subordinate to somebody else. But in God's hierarchy, man is only subordinate to God, and God is invisible.
So this historical cultural context informs why Paul is stressing this so much. But again, it almost sounds like legalism. So there has to be something more to it than just a legalistic. You're a sinner if you cover or don't cover your head. So let's continue.
Let's look at verses seven through twelve. He says a man should not cover his head because he is the image and glory of God. So too, woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman came from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.
This is why a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels in the Lord. However, woman is not independent of man, and man is not independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through a woman, and all things come from God.
So man here is likened to the image and glory of God and the woman, the glory of man. And this is a little, little difficult here, because in Genesis, it says that God said, let us create man in our own image, after our own likeness. And then it says, so God created male and female in his image. So when we read this, we are not to understand this, that women are not created in the image of Goddesse. All humans are created in the image of God.
But what he is, what Paul is trying to convey here is the order of creation. Man was created directly from God, from the dust of the earth, and God breathed life into him, and man was made directly in the image and glory of God. However, woman had come out of of man. In the creation account, God puts Adam to sleep and takes from his rib and fashions woman. And so Adam says, she is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
And that is why she is called Woman. So woman is out of the glory of man was created for Mandev. And then it tells us this. So again, there's a hierarchy, and God tells us why women are not the head of the house or why men head their house and head the church. Man did not come from woman.
Neither was man created for the sake of woman. We have to. When we examine the purpose of why woman was created, we go back to the Genesis account. And Adam, he's naming all of the animals. And as he is doing so, he notices the dogs.
They have a male and a female partner. The elephants have a male and a female partner. The tigers have a male and a female partner. The bears have a male and a female partner. And then he becomes lonely because he realizes that in all of creation, there are male and female counterparts except for him.
And he becomes. He begins to come lonely. And God says, it is not good for a man to be alone. And it says, so God created woman as a help meet and a companion to man.
Again, the fact that we have different rules, the fact that, that men and women are different, the fact that men have a different role in life than women have, does not change the value of men or woman. It does not change how God perceives you, how he loves you, how he values you. But it does indicate that there is a hierarchy. And there has to be a hierarchy. There has to be order in order for the world to operate.
You cannot operate in this order, so there has to be an order. And this is how God had ordained it. And then verse ten says something very, very weird. This is why woman should have a symbol of authority on her head. If you stop right there, it sounds like the reason she should have her head covered.
The symbol of authority is because she was created for man and came out of manda. But it doesn't stop there. There's a common that says because of the angels. This is weird. What do angels have to do with us?
What do they have to do with whether or not a woman's head is covered or uncovered? Well, it has this. Shawnee, will you pull up? I have a scripture in there. I think it's Isaiah six.
Let's look at Isaiah six. It's a single verse, verse two. It says, seraphim was standing above him and they each had six wings of two. They covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. This is described in angels in the presence of their authority, who cover their heads as they worship God.
In other verses in the Bible, and particularly in the New Testament, it tells us that angels are present in our public worship. When we are gathered together worshiping, there are angels present. The Bible also proclaims that the angels look at us eagerly to see the grace, right. To see the gospel that God has done for us, right. They're looking at us and imagine the example, the shock that it is for an angel who covers their face in the.
In front of their authority to come and see people in a position of subordinate, you know, in subordinate positions, not covering their faces. Now, I don't understand. I don't. I'm not going to stand here and say I understand still why that's relevant, but I do want to look at it from a different perspective as well. And let's bring up the cultural perspective in the ancient world, right?
So Paul brings up the fact that it would be a shock to the angel, but what about a shock to other people? In the ancient world, not only were there religious requirements, right, in the legalistic realm, to cover your head, but there were cultural requirements. And in some countries still are today, if you go to Iraq or to Iran or to several african nations and you are a woman, you are required to cover your head. And then some of these nations, it's a death penalty. Not to, I say you're not gonna go to.
To Dubai or to Afghanistan and walk around with your head uncovered because the cultural expectation is that you do well. 2000 years ago and even back, women were expected to cover their head. And there were very few circumstances where a woman did not. One circumstance were the temple prostitutes. The temple prostitutes are not.
Not Judaism. Were looking in the heathen world, right? They wore their hair down, and they did not cover their face. And what they broadcast it to the world is, we are a prostitute. We are free.
We are offering ourselves to you. In addition, it talked about in verse six that a woman should shave her head, and she's not going to cover her hair. If we go back to the book of deuteronomy, women who were proven to be adulterers had their head shaved. So having your head uncovered either said one of two things about you. In the first century, particularly in regions like Corinth and Galatia and Ephesus and Jerusalem, it said either that you were an adulterer, or it said that you were a prostitute.
And there's a bit of a problem here. Where Paul has been addressing the freedom of being a christian, right? There is a freedom that comes with it. We can. We can eat pork.
We can worship on Sunday or Friday or Saturday. These legalistic requirements fall out of the picture. But then he comes back and he says, look, even though you are free to drink if you so desire, you are not free to drink in front of an alcoholic because you lead them into temptation. And he says, even though you are free to eat meat sacrificed to idols, you are not free to do so if you know it, because you can burn the conscience of the people who do. He says, you have this freedom, but you need to love people more.
And now you have people who want to uncover their heads. And it's not an issue here of morality as much as it is an issue of what you are broadcasting to the people around you. Could you imagine today going to church on Sunday and telling your friends and your coworkers and your neighbors and everyone that you are a Christian while broadcasting to them that you're a prostitute.
That's not compatible. And that is the issue that Paul takes with this. He. He has the issue here that you are broadcasting, that you are a prostitute or an adulterer, or that you are. Another issue that.
That we know is coming up in Corinth was that you are broadcasting. I do not submit to authority. Right? I'm a rebel. And in Christianity, we are taught to obey your authorities, whether it's your husband.
Paul tells us to obey your husband, and for the husband to obey Christ, or it's the government. He tells you to obey your governing authorities. And in the time where this was how you displayed your subordination, it could be seen as rebellious, or it could be seen. There was another issue where Paul had said that in Christ, there is no jew or greek or male or female or free or slave. He said that all were equal in God.
And we see some people trying to cast off their gender. Well, if we're all equal in God, then I don't have to obey the rules of my gender. And all of these things broadcast to the world around them that they are not followers of God. It broadcasts that, hey, I subvert the authority of God, or I do not submit to the gender that God gave me, or I'm a prostitute, or I'm an adulterer. All of these things are things as.
As we are trying to love our neighborhood. These are things that are not good for us, that they're not good for a neighbor, because it's not conductive to proclaiming the gospel to them. You cannot wear a mini skirt that barely covers the bottom of your butt cheek and at the same time go and preach the gospel. Right? To put it in a modern term, let's finish real quick.
The last four verses of this passage picking up in verse 13. So he says this. Judge for yourself. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her as a covering?
If anyone wants to argue about this, we have no other custom, nor do the churches of God, to wrap this up here. Before I finish my thoughts on this, he says, look, judge for yourself. Is it proper now, we live in a culture where covering your hair or your head is not the expectation, and it's not. And I've been asked this. Shawnee asked me this a month ago, maybe two months ago, and we've seen it popping up in groups.
Do I have to cover my face today?
No, you don't, because Paul's issue is not legalism. His issue was that cultural aspect and what, what's in your heart and what you were broadcasting to the world around you.
So it almost seems irrelevant, but let's make it relevant. Is it proper to wear a mini skirt that cover just barely covers your butt cheeks and a sports bra, and go preach the gospel? Okay? Because that's the equivalency here. That is, that is the same Paul.
That would be the question Paul would ask us today if you were writing to us and not to people who lived 2000 years ago. That's the modern equivalent. And the answer is no, it would not be proper. It would not be proper to show up in church and Mendez. It's not proper for you either.
I don't want to see any men show up in church next week in a speedo. It's not proper. But then, look what he says. He says it's a disgrace. For he says nature teaches itself that if you are a man who has long hair, it's a disgrace to him.
But if you're a woman, it is her glory.
Why? Well, for one, naturally, men tend to just have shorter hair. The evidence, how many men go bald by the time they're 40? Right. It's.
It's natural. God did not create men to have long hair. And throughout human history, all the way from the, from Adam until now, it has been be trend for men to cut their hair. Within Judaism, there was one exception to that, and that was the Nazarete, the Nazarites who were not allowed to cut their hair for religious reasons. But then for women, and look at this, even today, there's the question, should woman have their head covered?
Look what he says. He says that God gave you hair as your cover. So even in a, in a culture where the expectation is not to cover your hair, you or your head, your head is still covered. God gave you a natural covering. But let's even break this down.
Everyone knows I don't like to be political, but we're gonna get political. Let's break this down and really say what Paul was saying. He is saying it is a disgrace for a man to dress like a female.
That's what he's really saying. But to God, there is no unisex. It doesn't exist. There is male and there is female, and males ought to not look like females, and females should not look like males. God has given us a distinction in the Old Testament, we're told that it is sinful for a man to dress like a female.
And I hate that this has to be said, but come on. We live in a world where men, particularly men, pretend to be women. For anyone who has heard anything about the Olympics, this last week, a biologically male boxer thought it was right and fair to join a woman's competition up against a biological female boxer, kicked the butt out of her and then got a medal for it. It is right. And the same goes the other way.
There are women out there who want to pretend to be male, and it's wrong. Not only is it wrong on, on the biological aspect, but it's disgraceful. And then here's how Pauldenn. Paul doesn't want to argue with this. He says, look, if anyone wants to argue about it, we have nothing to say.
Nor does the church of God. That's what he's saying there, because the church in Corinth liked to argue, going all the way back to chapter one, where Corinth boast in the knowledge that they have. They have knowledge but not wisdom. They like to argue. And Paul basically says, look, we're not going to argue about, if you want to argue about it, we have nothing to say to you because it's disgraceful.
And he says, there's no other culture and no church where this is not disgraceful or no church of God where this is not disgraceful.
So how do we apply this today? We're talking about covering your head in a culture where we don't cover our heads. So here's how we apply it today. First, we submit to the authorities that are above us. For a woman that is your husband, you have a biblical and moral obligation to submit to your husband if you are married and to the husband and to all men.
Right? Because while Christ says the woman is submissive to her husband, all men, married or not, are submissive to Christ.
And so for the men, we apply this by submit and ourselves to the will of God. We obey God. And then on the modesty aspect, we don't go and we don't do things in a way that's going to shock our neighbors, but shock our quote. We do. We don't do things that says to them, hey, I'm free, I'm loose, I'm a prostitute.
But we dress modestly, we dress adequately. We cover ourselves in such a way that the culture around us cannot look at us and say, there's no way that you follow God.
All right, moving on to try and finish up this chapter. The last half of this chapter focuses on the Lord's supper. So Paul moves from the way that we dress in the church to the way that we conduct ourselves, in particular when we are partaking of the communion. Let's go through this and break it down real quick. Verses 17 through 22.
He says, now, in giving this instruction, I do not praise you. Right? So this is a step back from where he was and everything he just talked about. He says, hey, I'm praising you because you, you're doing what I told you to do. Now I'm explaining why here.
He says the opposite. He says, in what I'm going to instruct you, I do not praise you because you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you. And in part, I believe it. Indeed.
It is even necessary that there be factions among you so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.
When you come together, then it is not to eat the Lord's supper. For at the meal, one eats his own supper. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk. Don't you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you for this matter. Okay. Wouldn't you say that when we come to church or the Bible study, where we gather for a service project or to help in communication, why don't you say, we're coming together for the better?
Right? We don't come to church to make life worse. We come to church in hopes of learning about God and growing in him. And life getting better, and we grow and get better, or we help our neighbor, or we help someone in need. We don't come to make things worse.
But he says this. When you come together, you don't come for the better, but for the worse. Now, I'm going to say this before we move on. This was not their intention. No one intended to come to church to harm each other.
But it was the course. It was the byproduct of what was happening. Look what he says. He says when you come to partake of the Lord's supper, you're not coming to partake of the Lord's supper. Now, we've talked about this a lot in my physical gatherings, and we've talked about it a little bit here.
Eating meals together was a common part of the first century church. They get in the book of acts, chapter two. It says they ate together daily. Right? Now, that's in Jerusalem.
And this practice had spread. One of the hallmarks of the christian faith was coming together and eaten. And those who had more money, who were richer, right? They helped those who were poorer and were soft. And they all ate together.
In fact, in the church in Corinth, this became known as the Agape feast, or the feast of love. Because every week they would come together and they would all eat together, right? It was a feast of love. They celebrated God. They took care of each other.
Everybody was on equal footing. But then over time, it morphed and they started eating with their social classes. So the rich would come and they would bring food, and the rich would eat and the poor would come and they would sit together and watch the rich eat. And then it says that even in these church gatherings, some of them got drunk. So what had started as a loving festival turned into a mockery.
When you come to church and under the premise that you're all going to eat together, and instead, only those who have enough money to buy food get to eat, and those who don't get to sit and watch, you are harming the pride, you're harming the soul of the poor people, and you are not. When you take the Lord's supper, at that point, you are not worshiping God. The environment that they created was an environment where, where the communion, the sacraments did not mean what they were meant to mean. I said it wasn't even a intentional. We're going to come here and mock you and scorn you and hurt you.
But sometimes our actions, whether intended or not, are more harmful than they are beneficial. And that's what began to take place here. I said, we need. He says, look, I don't praise you in this. I have nothing good to say about about this.
And I'm going to warn our churches today. We need to make sure when we come to church, when we gather, because you don't have to go to church to partake of communion. You can do it as families, you can do it it with a group of friends, you can do it in church. But when we come together to partake of the Lord's supper, wherever it may be, we need to be sure that we're not coming together in such a way that brings harm to the environment, that harms the spirit of God, to not come together in such a way that we mock those less fortunate than us, which is what was happening in corinthians. So here's what he says.
Look, if you're hungry, eat at home. Now let me say what Paul is not saying. Paul is not saying that we cannot have potlucks at church. Paul is not saying that we can't eat together. Paul is not saying that the feast per se had to stop.
But what he's saying is this behavior has to stop if you're going to come under the premise of gathering for a meal and the rich are going to eat and the poor are not. He says, eat at home. You have homes to eat in where you don't have to harm other people.
When we come together, we're coming together for the spirit of God. He says in chapter ten. And here's the thing, he says, though we are many people, there is one bread, that one body, we all partake and share in Christ. And we are one body in Christ.
So now that he has told us what is wrong with communion and Corinth, and even what may be wrong in our own gatherings that we need to be careful of, maybe it's not eating the food. It might be turning away people who look weird, or it might be shunning people who don't dress the same as we do, or it might be shaming people because they don't tithe as much as you do. There's all sorts of things that. That we do to segregate ourselves, that we need to pay attention, that we need to be aware of. But he says, this here is what the Lord's supper is.
I receive from the Lord what I pass to you. On the night in which he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, he also took the cup after supper.
And he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Alright, so first, what is the Lord's supper? Is it just bread and wine? Do we just come together and break the bread and. And take a piece and pour the cup and take a sip? No, it's not a feast.
Instead, it's a remembrance. But in particular here, this word remembrance is different than the idea of looking back. I might remember my 8th birthday party, I might remember my trip to Niagara Falls. I might remember when I saw the Statue of Liberty. And that's a looking back and fondly remembering something that is past.
But this word remembrance here is not. This is an active to bring the past to the current.
The crucification of Christ is not a past event. Right? When. When you read the Bible and read the way it speaks of it, it speaks of it as something that has happened, that happened in all time. So Christ, physically, in a timeline, died 2000 years ago.
His same death went back 2000, 4000 years to the beginning of creation. And it covered all men who believed in him, from Adam until himself. Right? It was effective for all time. And when he died, it did not just cover people from the past to the present or just the present, but it covered all people from that point forward.
It is a timeless death. It is an act that outside of the bounds of time, is always effective. And so the word remembrance here is not. We don't look back and just remember. Oh, yeah, Christ died, but we bring it forward and bring it into the current.
Christ has died for me, and we remember it not as some far off event, but we remember it as if it just happened.
You know, a lot of, a lot of family and friends want to forget the way their loved ones die. And that's the opposite in Christianity. Christ does not want us to forget how he died. His death is so critical to our salvation or our life depends upon his death. And he wants it to be something that when we sit and we remember his body and we remember his blood, that it's not something that to us is a far removed.
Even when we come together, we do it quick, but it's not something meant to be a 32nd experience and we're done. It's something to be meant as a real moment of experiencing communion with God, experiencing those thoughts, experiencing that gratitude and love toward God. So the bread, he says, is my body, right? The body of Christ, which was scorned and whipped, plated with a crown of thorns and note upon a cross. Then he tells us this cup, he says, the new covenant, our Bibles label, label it as the Old Testament and the New Testament.
But really it's the old covenant and the new covenant. Right, the old covenant specifically. We're not talking about the abrahamic covenant, we're talking about the Noah. Sorry, the mosaic covenant, right? That's the Old Testament is the law.
But the new covenant is the new covenant between God and mankind, which ironically is the old covenant, the one that he made of Abraham.
Right. That we should be made righteous by faith alone in Jesus Christ. True faith in Christ will make us righteous in him. That is the cup of the new covenant. And it was given to us in his blood.
It was bought, it was paid. And so as often as we partake of it, we do so in remembrance of that and we bring it current. However, there's a second component to it. It's not just in remembrance of his death and bringing that current all the time, but it's looking. So we look back, but we also look forward.
Look what he says. As often as you do it, you proclaim his death until he comes. So we look back when we do it, but we're also looking forward when we do it. Like you're going to come. There will be a time when this stops, when communion stops, and he is with us and we with him.
So we're looking forward. And finally, as we, as we end tonight, let's look at the last verses here. He says, so then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself in this way. Let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.
For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself. And this is why many are sick and ill among you. You and many have fallen asleep. If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.
If anyone is hungry, you should eat at home, so that when you gather together, you will not come under judgment. I will give instructions about the other matters when I come. So this section here, you don't have to raise your hands or show me or give a thumbs up. But how many people have read this and thought that if you are unworthy to take the communion, you shouldn't take it? I'll raise my hand.
There is a time I thought that's what it meant. But. But let me ask you another question. Who here is worthy right now to take of a communion?
No one should be raising their hands.
Who of us is worthy of Christ?
Not one of us is worthy of Christ. Not one of us is worthy of the gift of God, of redemption, of his kingdom, or any other good thing he has given us. None of us can come today worthy to partake of the communion. Paul's admonition here is not about being worthy to partake of it, but how you partake of it. And that plays on what we read two passages ago.
They were coming together, and they were not taken in a worthy manner. They weren't taken of the Lord's supper, but they were eating their own meal, and they were shaming one another. That's why this ends here. It says, eat at home, so that when you come together, you can take it worthily. The idea here that Paul wants us to examine in ourselves is how we are taking the communion.
Are we taking it quickly, as in, I want this to be done so I can go home? Or are we taking it with reverence toward God? With reverence toward what he had done, with remembrance and thankfulness and love? Now, I'm not going to say that means you don't have to worry about your sin, but we just as much. I think we need to worry about our sin.
We need to examine the sin in ourselves, and we need to be repentant of that toward God. We need to confess it where we need to confess it. But the issue that Paul has is how you partake of it. And so he says, examine yourself, and in this way, take of it. Now, here's what he says that I want to end with.
He says, this is why many are sick and don't among you and have even fallen asleep. So he says, because of the way they were taken it, the unworthy manner in which they treated it, many of them were ill and died. Now, I'm going to say two things about that. That is theme. That doesn't mean that God will always make people ill or die when they treat it unworthy, but it also doesn't mean that God can't do that as well.
Right? This is a statement about what happened in Corinth. Many in Corinth were sick and died as a result. And he says this, if we judge ourselves, we will not be judged. If I judge whether or not I'm treating the Lord's supper worthy or not, I don't have to fear if God judged me for it, because I will treat it worthy if I properly judge myself.
There's no fear of the judgment of God, but also this judgment of God here. He says, we will be judged by God if we don't. But we need to explain what this judgment is. This judgment is not condemnation or damnation. This judgment is the judgment of a loving God to his children.
In Hebrews, he says, those that he loves, he disciplines. He chastises. Sometimes physical death is a judgment, a chastisement of God. But it's nothing, always condemnation. When you are talking about saved people here, judgment here.
And Paul says that when we are judged, we are disciplined.
So we need to. We need to understand the way in which judgment is used here. And then he ends. He says, when I visit you in person, I will discuss other matters as we, as we come to an end tonight. And we're going to partake of the Lord's communion in just a minute.
And I invite everyone to stay and to partake of it with me.
We've talked about how we can apply the first half of this chapter, but the second half is something that we look at weekly. We look at that. I think it's more common to us. And I want to encourage everyone. Paul says, examine yourself.
This doesn't mean that you are treating unworthy. It doesn't mean that you aren't. But I encourage, as the music goes up and I go collect my communion upstairs. And then in each week that we do, we come together and we examine our own hearts in relation to the community, and are we treating it with the worth that it deserves? Are we treating it for what it is?
And I examine that, whether it's here or in our other services or even at another service, that we examine the conditions we make for the other churchgoers among us. Those who dress different, talk different, have less money than us, have other things. Are we making an environment where they are loved? Are we making an environment where the Lord's, the Holy Spirit of God, can be conductive around us? And if not, let's change that.
Paul says that he doesn't condone that. He says, get rid of it. Let us examine ourselves, and let us come and partake of the Lord's supper tonight and every week after in a worthy manner. I'll see everyone else who does not stick around. After our prayer for Bible study on Wednesday at 630, we'll continue in Luke, chapter four.
We'll be. I think we're, like, halfway through it, so we'll pick up where we left off on Wednesday at 630. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your patience with us. We thank you, Lord, that through your forbearance, you have not judged us immediately for our sin. And we thank you for your grace that has been able to forgive us of our sins. Father, I pray that we will be mindful as your people.
The image that we portray to other people, how, though we dress and speak and do other things, will reflect upon you, that we will not be shocking the world into disbelief. I also pray, Father, that you'll help each of us submit to the authorities that we have, whether we're wives to husbands or husbands to Christ, or not married at all. Submit, and directly to you. Will you help us to do that, Father? And I pray, Father, that your spirit will always be here in our gatherings with us, that the environment will be welcoming to your spirit.
And I pray, Lord, that as we take your supper tonight night, that we will do so with a holy remembrance of you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.